Smaato has published its Mobile Advertising Metrics Report for January 2010. Januarys metrics show a significant improvement of Android device clickthrough rates compared to December, rising from 65 to 163, but Symbian handsets remain top of the list. The metrics also reveal the average response time of ad networks worldwide as 256 milliseconds (ms). The fastest response time was 43 ms, the slowest, 887 ms.
Smaatos metrics are based upon 35 mobile ad networks and over 4 billion ad requests served in the Smaato Network of more than 2,300 registered mobile publishers in January 2010.
The boost in Android clickthrough rates comes on the back of a large uptake in Android ad requests in the Smaato network and newly-introduced Android devices, including the Google Nexus One, Motorola Droid and operator-branded handsets. Smaato believes the increase in Android clickthrough rates could also be partly attributable to new owners of Android handsets, who are curious about responding to mobile advertising.
Symbian handsets still hold the highest clickthrough rate of 173, compared to the averaged Index of 100, an increase on the figure of 161 in December. The iPhone and iPod touch score 104, down from 119 in decemberm, but this is still enough to put Apple in third place in the Smaato Index.
The report also measures the fill rate of ads across different mobile advertising networks. This is defined as the percentage of ads delivered per ad request, and varies by factors such as country, device and content type. The ad networks are not named in the monthly Smaato metrics, but are revealed in the dashboard of registered Smaato publishers reporting and analytics tools.
The top performing mobile ad network worldwide had a fill rate of 89% in January 2010, a 10% increase compared to the best-performing ad network in December. Despite this increase, the average worldwide ad network fill rate fell from 35% in December to 29% in January. This confirms that mobile advertising had a very strong holiday season in 2009. In the second half of January, the industry saw higher fill rates as campaigns and advertisers returned to business.
The average fill rate of mobile ad networks in the US was 47%, compared to 55% in December 2009. The fill rate figure for the UK is very low at only 7%, with the top-performing mobile ad network achieving a fill rate of 33% In India, the fill rate was only 8%, despite the presence of one very high performing network.
Theres more information about Smaatos mobile advertising metrics in a Whitepaper, Global Choices in Mobile Advertising, which is available for download here.